Emily is a research associate at the Brain, Belief, and Behaviour research group at Coventry University as well as associated with University of Oxford’s Cognition and Culture lab. She is a child developmental psychologist and uses cross-cultural, evolutionary, comparative and developmental approaches. Her research explores various aspects of how ‘culture’ originates and is transmitted. She explores particular cultural phenomenon such as the development of supernatural and human agent concepts, morality, conformity, skill learning and problem solving, and tool creation.
Selected Publications
McGuigan, N., Burdett, E. R., Burgess, V., Dean, L., Lucas, A., Vale, G., & Whiten, A. (in press). Innovation and social transmission in experimental micro-societies: exploring the scope of cumulative culture in young children. Phil Trans B.
Burdett, E. R., Dean, L. G., & Ronfard, S. (in press). A diverse and flexible teaching toolkit facilitates the human capacity for cumulative culture. Review of Philosophy and Psychology.
Lucas, A. J., Burdett, E. R., Burgess, V., McGuigan, N., Wood, L. A., Harris, P. L., & Whiten, A. (in press). Children’s selective copying of their mother versus an expert. Child Development.
Burdett, E. R., Lucas, A. J. McGuigan, N., Buchsbaum, D., Wood, L. A., & Whiten. A. (2016). Do children trust the expert or the crowd? Children’s selective trust in normative and instrumental contexts. PLOS ONE, 11, e0164698.
Wood, L. A., Harrison, R. A., Lucas, A. L., McGuigan, N., Burdett, E. R., & Whiten, A. (2016). ‘Model age-based’ and ‘copy when uncertain’ biases in children’s social learning of a novel task. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 150, 272-284.
Burdett, E.R., & Barrett, J. L. (2016). The circle of life: Israeli and British preschooler’s notions of life-cycle phenomena. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 34, 2, 276-290.
Cohen, E., Burdett, E. R., Knight, N., & Barrett, J. L. (2011). Cross-cultural similarities and differences in person-body reasoning: Experimental evidence from the UK and Brazilian Amazon. Cognitive Science, 35, 1282-1305.
